Tag: Congress - Page 10

Despite all the talk in Congress about the need to balance the budget, there's a serious dearth of new ideas about how it might actually be done. The Center for American Progress's budget proposal suggests pricing carbon and placing a tax on imported

In this goofy play on one of this year's most popular Super Bowl ads (y'know, the one where the little kid runs around the house trying to use the force on various stuff), Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) teams up with Darth Vader to explain that nothing

Between the efforts to push five or so offshore drilling bills that considered in Congress over the last few weeks, there's been no shortage of posturing about "fighting" high oil prices. Some of these bills have

The US Senate shot down a bill designed to expand offshore drilling in Alaska, Virgina, and the Gulf of Mexico. Three separate pro-drilling bills passed the House of Reps last week, and would open up the amount

Yesterday, Daniel wrote a brief profile on GOP presidential contender John Huntsman. The ex-ambassador to China recently mentioned in a recent TIME interview that *gasp* he sees no reason to disagree with the vast consensus of scientists who say that

This post is an installment in a series about the state of American climate skepticism. I'll be expanding upon the ideas put forward in my recent Slate piece, Do Climate Skeptics Change Their Minds?, so read that first. Photo: Steve Snodgrass via

Sorry about the exceedingly long headline (appallingly long by accepted standards of blogging brevity) but it somehow seems an appropriate when two of the weightier stories making their way around today are items

... But it's all about politics. The New York Times reported earlier this week that Democrats thought they'd found a strategy to peel away some of the oil subsidies that the federal government annually doles out to some

Despite consistently spouting rhetoric that would lead you to believe that the GOP was all about slashing government spending -- they've certainly repeated the mantra often enough to make folks assume they were serious about it -- they don't seem to be

Photo credit: eschipul via Flickr/CC BY
The Days of Cheap Oil are Over: The Elephant in the Room
When gas prices are high and the oil companies are seeing massive profits, going after the likes of Exxon and BP is good politics. The Democrats know this,

Much of the focus on US government budget cuts and the environment have been on the EPA and NOAA. Now the Energy Information Agency has announced how much less they'll be able to do after having their funding cut 14% compared to last year. None of it

Just weeks after the 1-year anniversary of the BP Gulf spill, the US House of Representatives passed a bill that would force the US government to offer more offshore drilling leases to oil companies. All but

I reported yesterday that there's a major push from the GOP to vastly expand offshore drilling and to loosen regulations to boot -- they have, evidently learned zilch from last year's catastrophic disaster in the Gulf

While you were paying attention to the death of Osama bin Laden, you may have missed this important news: The House of Representatives may be voting this week on three bills that would expand offshore oil and gas drilling in the US--and shockingly do

Just a few months ago, the Speaker of the House, Rep. John Boehner, voted alongside a unified Republican party to keep doling out multi-billion dollar oil subsidies to corporations that have recently seen record-breaking profits. But just yesterday,